Sunday, June 6, 2010

Ok, this post may seem rather random but I came across this article because the names Jack Hodgins and Hart Hanson were both mentioned.

So - apparently Dr. Jack Hodgins was named after one of Hart Hanson's friends. (Am I the only one who didn't know that?)

Here's the story:

Over the past 30 years, Jack Hodgins has written about characters from many walks of life -- architects and comic artists, soldiers and strippers and steam-locomotive operators--but not until The Master of Happy Endings has the 71-year-old written about the profession he called his own for several decades."I swore I'd never write about a teacher," says Hodgins, energetic in the early hours of a mid-spring morning in a Toronto hotel cafe. "Then I thought that maybe the time has come. I'm retired."

The teacher in Hodgins' ninth novel is Axel Thorstad, a 77-year-old retired high school teacher, a man "taller than everyone else and fiercely unbent," who retreats to a remote island off the B.C. coast after the death of his wife, "where his size 13 soles" leave "water-filled depressions in the sand." Thorstad becomes a recluse, but when he feels the island's seclusion closing in on him, he places an ad in a newspaper offering to tutor in return for a place to live.

Soon, he takes up with a wealthy suburban couple and their teenage son, Travis Montana, a budding actor with a role on an American TV teen drama. Axel is hired to chaperone the boy and to ensure his eyes remain on the books while he navigates the temptations of Hollywood.The Tinseltown research came easily to Hodgins, thanks to a close friend, Hart Hanson, creator of the TV show Bones."I've been down several times," says Hodgins of his visits to the show's set. "I realized I was beginning to know enough about his business that maybe I could make interest of it."So, just as Axel and Travis travel to L.A., Hodgins returned to Hanson's set. "Back I went to interview all the actors on the show. Everyone thinks they know about television, but it's the little things, like looking around and realizing there's not a living thing around except for a few trees shaped like animals."

Read the rest of the story here. Can't wait for that book to come out!